Special

por Rogerio Coelho

Of the extemporaneity of the teachings (Part 1)

 

I still have many things to say to you, but presently you cannot bear them


“(...) You will hear with your ears and you will understand nothing; you shall see with your eyes and you shall see nothing”. 
-               Jesus. (Mt., 13:13)


On some occasions, even the Apostolic College was bewildered by the words of Jesus; for example, when He made references to the events that would occur in Jerusalem at the close of His mission. Here is the record of perplexity1"but they understood nothing of all this: that language was hidden from them and they did not understand what He was saying to them".

It was not until later, after the facts materialized, that their understanding was clarified. Their prior understanding would have been out of time. Thus everything follows a logical, sequential, coherent, orderly determination so that steps are not burned. Hence the enlightenment of things, which we still are not aware of, is to be taught in mild and opportune homeopathic doses. Too much light, blinds. The same is true regarding the revelations of the Spirits. They obey a regime of opportunity, according to our capacity for assimilation. Jesus, who was aware of all things, announced1"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them presently".

On the other hand, the Lioness Master explains: "This statement - there is no objection - is one of the most important from a religious point of view, since it proves, without the possibility of the slightest mistake, that Jesus did not say everything He had to say, for the reason that they would not have understood Him, not even His Apostles, since the Master was addressing them. If he had given them secret instructions, the Gospels would make mentioned such instructions. Now since He did not say everything to His Apostles, their followers could not have known more than they, in relation to what was said, most probably they misunderstood the meaning of the Lord’s words or gave a false interpretation to His thoughts, often veiled in the form of a Parabola. The religions which were founded based on the Gospel cannot therefore claim to possess the whole truth, since He (Jesus) reserved for Himself the further completion of His thoughts. The principle of immutability, in which they are established, is a denial of the very words of Jesus.

Under the name of Comforter and Spirit of Truth, Jesus announced the coming of the One who was to teach all things and recall what He had said. Therefore, His teaching was not complete. And for the rest, he foresees not only that he would be forgotten, but also what He said would be distorted, since the Spirit of Truth would come to remember everything and, in combination with Elijah, restore all things, according to the true thought of His teachings.

When will this new Revelator come? It is evident that if, at the time when Jesus spoke men were not in a position to understand the things that remained to be said to them, it would not be in a few years only that they could acquire the necessary enlightenment to understand them. Since to understand certain parts of the Gospel, excluding moral precepts, it was necessary to acquire the knowledge that only the progress of science would allow and which could only be achieved with time and many generations. If, therefore, the new Messiah had come shortly after Christ, he would find the ground still under the same conditions and would not have done more than the same Christ, Himself. Now from that time to this day no great revelation has come that has completed the Gospel and clarified its obscure parts, a sure sign that the Envoy had not yet appeared.

Who should this Envoy be? Saying, "I will ask my Father, and He will send you another Comforter", Jesus clearly indicates that this Comforter would not be Him otherwise He would say instead, "I will again complete what I have taught you ". Not only did He not say this as He added so that it may be eternally with you and it will stay with you. This proposition could not refer to an incarnate individuality, since it could not be with us eternally, nor even stay with us. He understands it, however, as a reference to a doctrine which, when we have assimilated it, it may be eternally with us as an inalienable intellectual patrimony. The Comforteris, according to the thought of Jesus, the advent of a fully consoling doctrine, and the one that inspires it is the Spirit of Truth.

Spiritism accomplishes, as demonstrated in the basic book the "Genesis ", Chapter I, item 30, all the conditions of the Comforter that Jesus promised. It is not an individual doctrine, nor a human conception; no one can claim to be its creator. It is the fruit of the collective teaching of Spirits, and the Spirit of Truth presides over them. Nothing suppresses the Gospel: rather it completes and elucidates it. With the help of the new laws which it reveals, and these laws combined with those already discovered by Science, it makes itself understood, clarifies what was unintelligible and admits the possibility of what unbelief considered inadmissible. It had forerunners and prophets who sensed its arrival. By its moral force it prepares the Kingdom of Well on Earth.

The doctrine of Moses, incomplete, was circumscribed to the Jewish people; that of Jesus, more complete, spread throughout the Earth through Christianity, but did not convert all; Spiritism, even more complete, rooted in all beliefs, will convert Humanity. When Jesus told His Apostles, "another will come later, who will teach you what I cannot teach now," He then proclaimed the indispensable need for reincarnation. How could these men take advantage of the more complete teaching that would later be taught; how would they be able to understand it, if they did not have to live again? Jesus had spoken an inconsequential thing if, according to common doctrine, the men of the future were to be new men, souls out of nowhere at birth. It is admitted, on the contrary, that the Apostles and the men of their time lived afterwards; who still live again today, and the promise of Jesus is then fully justified. Having developed to the touch of social progress, their intelligence can presently accept what they could not then. Without reincarnation the promise of Jesus was illusory. "

The insuperable Master Lioness goes on1: "The great and important law of reincarnation was one of the capital points that Jesus could not develop because the men of His time were not sufficiently prepared for ideas of this order and its consequences. However, He established the mentioned law as He did with everything else. The Law of Reincarnation – studied today by Spiritism and presently in evidence - is the key to the understanding of many passages of the Gospel which, without it, seem to be true counter-insights.

It is through this Law that one finds the explanation of the words above, admitting they say what they mean. Since they cannot be applied to the Apostles, it is evident that they refer to the future Reign of Christ, that is, at a time when His doctrine, better understood, will become a universal law.

Saying that some of those present at the time would see its advent, He forcibly referred to those who will be reincarnated again at this time. The Jews, however, imagined that they would be able to see all that Jesus announced and considered His allegorical phrases to the letter.

Indeed, some of His predictions were fulfilled in due time, such as the ruin of Jerusalem, the miseries that followed, and the dispersion of the Jews. His vision, however, projected much further, so that when He spoke of the present he always meant the future".

The moral that the Spirits teach is that of the Christ, for there is no better one".

"(...) I still have many things to say to you, But at present you cannot bear them Jesus. (John 16:12)

We learn from Allan Kardec1 that "Spiritism is a new science that comes to reveal to men, through irrefutable proofs, the existence and nature of the spiritual world and its relations with the corporeal world. It shows us this world no longer as a supernatural thing; on the contrary, as one of the living and unceasing forces of Nature, as the source of an immensity of phenomena hitherto misunderstood and, therefore, relegated to the domain of the fantastic and the marvelous. It is to these relations that Christ mentions and therefore this is why much of what He said remained unintelligible or was falsely interpreted...

Spiritism is the key with the help of which everything is explained in an easy way.

The Lioness Master teaches: Spiritism, making known to us the invisible world that surrounds us and in the midst of which we lived without suspecting it, as well as the laws that govern it, its relations with the visible world, the nature and state of the beings who inhabit it, and therefore the destiny of man after death, is a true revelation in the scientific sense of the word.

By its nature, the Spiritist revelation has a double feature: it participates at the same time of the divine revelation and the scientific revelation. It participates in the first, because its appearance was providential and not the result of the initiative or the premeditated design of man; because the fundamental points of the doctrine come from the teaching given by the Spirits. It participates in the second, because this teaching is not a privilege, but it is ministered to all in the same way; because they are not those who transmit them and those who receive passive beings, exempted from the work of observation and research, for not renouncing to reasoning and free will; because the examination is not forbidden, but, on the contrary, recommended. In a word, what characterizes the Spiritist revelation is because its origin is divine and the initiative of Spirits and its elaboration is the fruit of man's work".

The necessity of the Third Revelation1

"What is the use of the moral doctrine of the Spirits, since it does not differ from that of Christ? Does man need a revelation?"

"From the moral point of view, it is beyond doubt that God has given man a guide, giving him the conscience that says: "Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you". Natural morality is positively inscribed in the hearts of men; but do you all know how to read it in this book? Have you never despised its counsels and precepts? What have you done with the morals of Christ? How do those who practice it even practice it? Do you disapprove of a father for repeating his instructions ten times but he does not follow them? Why would God do less than a family man? Why should He not from time to time send special messengers to men to remind them of their duties and bring them back to the right path when they turn away from it? (Continues on the next issue).


Translation:
Eleni Frangatos - eleni.moreira@uol.com.br

 
 

     
     

O Consolador
 Revista Semanal de Divulgação Espírita